Adjusting to the Now, Over and Over Again

Last week I attended a conference in Santa Fe, Quest 2026, all about vivid aging for older women. One of the speakers was Kat Miller, a counselor and pro-aging activist who talked about falling in love with impermanence (“Crazy, right?” she said). Kat urged each of us to buy a bouquet of flowers and keep it until the petals turn to dust, to photograph each stage and admire its beauty.

Kat is not naive about loss; in her TED Talk, she discloses that she’s lost siblings to Alzheimer’s and another is in its early stages. And yet she says, “What if I weren’t afraid? How would I treat myself?” Her answer involves embracing change: Slowing down physically makes room for contemplation, slowing down mentally yields new connections and patterns. Without fear, Kat says, she would be an explorer of her own life.

Kat acknowledges that she herself is ageist, despite all the work she does (“My work is weird as hell,” she told us with glee, thus inspiring me to greater weirdness). Ageism is in the culture and so in us; her mission is to help people break free.

That Age Freely perspective goes beyond rah-rah age positivity. It gets at the heart of what it means to be age-real. The transition from doing to being, the recognition that expansion can happen at the same time as decline, the gratitude for being alive in whatever form that takes, is true wisdom.

Yet I can’t help wondering what the flowers are thinking as they become dust.

While attending the conference I dealt with a recurrence of a medical issue that’s uncomfortable in varying degrees and lacks a clear diagnosis. On good days I’ve felt almost normal, on bad days I’ve been miserable (It’s like the poet said: “Joy and pain are woven fine”). Being an active participant on my healthcare team has long been a point of pride, but it doesn’t instantly solve every medical riddle. What a great lesson in humility (But if you’re listening, Universe, I’ve learned this lesson and it’s time to move on).

Dealing with this challenge reminds me that age positivity alone becomes toxic. Living in negativity, embracing ageism, is even more toxic. While finding the middle ground has never been my forté, it’s now become essential.

In the past I’ve touted the U-Shaped Curve of Happiness, which is based on research and shows that people are happiest as children and again later in life.  But there’s a bit of nuance to it. The curve hits its peak in our sixties, then tapers off. And of course the curve is an aggregate; some people are having a rotten time, pulling down the average in our seventies and beyond.

Dance Till You Drop?

I love Leonard Cohen’s quote, “Ring the bells that still can ring,” but on a painful day there isn’t much ringing going on. It’s one thing to hurt when, for example, recovering from surgery, when you know that you’ll heal, usually predictably. It’s different to be uncomfortable with no clear path to healing. The paradox of aging is that there are losses and gains, but the balance of gain and loss moves over time. The question becomes: How to keep adjusting to that changing balance?

I’ve never been good at change, but it’s time I learn to adjust to the new now, over and over again. To be in love with impermanence while in pain feels like a bridge too far; perhaps it is the work of another day. To try to “reverse aging” is a nonsensical goal; to seek to live healthily, minimize pain and be active for as long as possible seems reasonable.

I’m lucky to have access to fairly good medical care. And I’m lucky to have a background in science so I can explore medical journal articles and do some sleuthing on my own. Reading in the evenings after the conference I learned of several likely explanations for my issue that can be managed with a combination of over the counter products. After some trial and error I’ve started to feel better.

I’m very aware that not everyone has access to information and treatment, and not every kind of pain has a solution. Walking into a drugstore and buying whatever she wants would be a luxury for women in many parts of the world, not to mention many older women in the US.

Adjusting to the Now

I aspire to live in my eighties like my shero Joan Price, who just issued a new edition of her classic book, Naked at Our Age. Joan keeps popping up in New York Times articles on senior sexuality. And a year after a car accident that left her with neck fractures in three places, Joan is back teaching line dancing in her beloved Sebastopol. As Joan wrote, “As long as this is my reality, what can I take charge of?”

I’m not one to pray, but I do like the Serenity Prayer: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. May we all have the serenity of Kat Miller and the courage of Joan Price. And on top of that, may we all have a big fat helping of luck.